Taking Attendance with Moodle

-Did you know you can easily track your in-class attendance with Moodle? In addition to tracking whether or not a student was in class, the Attendance activity allows you to add a brief note to each entry. You'll be able to quickly tell how many times each student has an excused absence for "food poisoning", "death of cat" or "UFO invasion".

Here's how:



Or, watch with fullscreen options HERE. (The fullscreen button is just to the right of the volume button.)

Full disclosure: this 2 Minute Tech post is actually 3 minutes and 7 seconds. I'm sorry for the extra minute seven.

Today's Recap (Online Tools You Can Use)

Today's workshop session "Online Tools You Can Use" explored several scenarios and the types of free, online tools you might use to remedy those scenarios. For anyone unable to attend, here's the two minute recap:

Scenario #1: Student/colleague/spouse/friend/stranger calls/emails/texts/tweets you because he/she cannot remember or doesn’t understand your thoughtful step by step instructions for [insert computer-related task here].

• Online Tool You Can Use: Screenr.com Free, online screen recording device. Record exactly what’s happening on your screen. If you have a microphone, you can record your voice, too.

Scenario #2: Your class/committee/bookclub/department has a lot to talk about before/after/during your next meeting.  

• Online Tool  You Can Use: Backchannels. Backchannels are interactive websites that allow multiple authors to share text (or links, videos or images). There are LOTS of backchannel sites; the one you use depends upon your needs. 
• Today’s Meet (todaysmeet.com) 
• TypeWithMe (typewith.me)  
• LinoIt (linoit.com) 

Scenario #3: You finally have an awesome picture of yourself to use as your new Google/Moodle/Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter profile pic, except your sister/kid/dog/BFF is also in the picture.  

• Online Tool You Can Use: Online Photo Editors: there are lots of online picture editors these days. My personal favorite is Picnik (picnik.com). It’s simple, does not require an account and integrates with other photo-sharing sites very well. 

For more details on all of these tools, and links to a few more, checkout the workshop handout.

Moodle New Student Guide

Need a quick and simple way to guide your students through Moodle? Use this handy-dandy Moodle Student Guide flowchart:



Click HERE to see the full size flowchart. Feel free to send a link to this flowchart to your students or to post the link on your own Moodle pages.

Making a Moodle Course Unavailable to Students

Each fall, about a week after classes start I have several phone conversations almost exactly like this:

Me: "Hi, this is Lisa"
Student: "Hi, do you do Moodle stuff?"
Me: "Yes, what can I help you with?"
Student: "I'm still seeing, like all the classes I had last year and the year before when I login to Moodle. Can you get me out of those classes?"

This simply means that old courses are still listed as available to students. A simple remedy is to make the course unavailable to students. This doesn't affect your ability to look at the course, it doesn't delete any student contributions/data or grades from the course, it just hides it from student view.

Here's a short video showing the steps to make a Moodle course unavailable:

Welcome!

This is the beginning of 2 Minute Tech @ Coe! Each week I'll post a two minute teaching with technology tip on this blog.  Feel free to leave a comment if you've used the tip, if you have a better idea or if you have a suggestion for another tip.